Long before analytics, every newspaper editor knew the best way to guarantee a big reaction to a story was to write about pets.

But only grudgingly.

Despite the great results, editors thought pets were not real news. And all the love the people had for their cat or dog or bird or horse? That was just cheap sentimentality not worthy of a real news-gathering operation.

A lot of stock analysts and investors seem to feel the same way. Pets are not a real business. They underestimate the number of people with pets, how many pets they have, how many pets they are going to have, and how much people are willing to spend to feed, clothe and entertain their furry best friends.

That is why stocks like PetSmart
US:PETM
so often smash analyst expectations, as PetSmart did just a few days ago. And that is why PetSmart has long been a big holding at Gunderson Capital Management in my conservative-growth portfolio. Today, I rank it at 85th among the 3,178 stocks that I follow.

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